And why was Hitler's Germany able to conquer several countries and kill millions? Because big powers felt "we're afraid of repetition of the 1st war" and "peace in our time" and "let's make deal with him againt the others". Those policies caused utter disaster.
When you find a scorpion at your doorstep, even if it talks smoothly, and proposes to share the room as mutually advantageous, you don't negotiate with it.
Oh, now I see what meant by "with russian-compatible thought processes". Dehumanizing other people by likening them to insects and attributing incompatible 'thought processes' sounds familiar. The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
You misunderstood. I meant the dangerous poisonous nature of the scorpion, not that I hate the insect; I am fascinated by scorpions, but I don't bring them home. I can rephrase - when Russian state official is at your doorstep, and makes suggestions that part of your space will now be his, don't negotiate.
> The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
No - it lost them because it allied with Hitler in destroying Europe as it existed then. From the Winter War against Finland, to invading Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to invading Poland with Hitler and jointly holding a victory parade as the rest of Europe watched in horror. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military...
USSR lost many people not only because of the German invasion, but also because they had a terrible leader who co-started WW II and misjudged Hitler. And Europe and America made sure USSR won that war.
Tell me, how long other countries on the European continent fought Nazis?
>Europe and America made sure USSR won that war
That's funny, almost all of Europe fought along with Nazi with small exceptions like Greeks. And no one in Europe was in position to "make sure the USSR won the war"
Europe was divided, we know that. My people fought both against USSR and together with it against Germans. History and its significance can't be explained in single historical essay, and it certainly should not be misused to advance one's poor argument.
'Helped a little bit' are the right words. And helped only out self-preservation fearing what would happen to them if the USSR loses and its resources become available to Nazis.
My impression is that they helped a lot: they supplied the USSR with trucks, jeeps, food, clothing, experts in industrial engineering, etc; their ships endured attacks by the German navy to deliver this aid to Soviet ports; their bombing campaigns had the opposite effect on Germany, i.e., to make manufactured goods and things like refined petroleum products a lot more scarce than they would otherwise be.
Yes, their campaign in Africa too. But compare that to 2/3 (or 4/5 depending on the source) [0] of total Nazi casualties that happened on the Eastern front and now it's not so much.
The assertion this thread is talking about is, "Europe and America made sure USSR won that war". How many casualties Europe and America took in the course of doing so is a separate question. The US and Britain had competent leaders and an advantageous strategic position, so they were able to make sure the USSR won the war at a cost of relatively few US and British casualties.
Helping isn't measured by numbers of killed Nazis. It was about massive material support of the USSR so it was able to fight the aggressor and kill so many Nazis. The West enabled that.
Here, from the bigshots from USSR:
"Khrushchev went further and admitted: “Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] within the small circle of people around him. He said that . . . if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope because we lost so much of our country.”"
"Perhaps the last word should be left to Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who masterminded the Red Army victories. He admitted, in a bugged conversation in 1963, that without Lend-Lease the USSR “could not have continued the war”."
Not according to Comrades Stalin and Khrushchev, who were in a position to know about such things:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.
-- Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918–1945
When you find a scorpion at your doorstep, even if it talks smoothly, and proposes to share the room as mutually advantageous, you don't negotiate with it.